Three Ways to Honor the Wisdom of the Great Mother
One of the wonderful things about Spring is that it really gets your attention. No matter how busy, distracted, or frazzled you’ve let yourself become, those first bright yellow daffodils wake you up and bring a smile to the most downcast souls. The blooming earth is calling you to take a joy and gratitude break. Just look at the marvels around you—the bright green leaves, the flowers, and the nesting birds—and consider the gifts you receive every day from the Great Mother, matriarch of this living, loving home.
Worshipped from ancient times in traditional cultures around the world, the Great Mother, Mother Earth, or Gaia, as she is also known, is the goddess of motherhood, fertility, creation, and the bounty of the natural world. She is the feminine counterpart of the Sky Father, of God the Father. The Great Mother shelters, nourishes, and sustains life. She is the feminine face of God, and her powers are reflected in all the nurturing, healing, creative, and life-giving work that helps make this world a home. In its purest and most profound sense, “home” suggests peace, safety, belonging, solace, joy, sustenance, and empowerment. The Great Mother bestows all you need to live and thrive, to learn and grow, to heal and awaken.
- Strengthen the bonds of love – Think about your relationship with your fellow members of the human family. The Great Mother empowers and shelters life as it forms and grows. Just as you were nurtured and brought into the world by your own mother, so the Great Mother gives life to all creation. The protective love between family members makes life possible—whether these family members are your parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, or the people on the bus. All children of the Great Mother are family and share the same needs and aspirations. What are the relationships that nurture your life and how do you honor them? What can you do to send a message of love to your extended human family? Think about the spirit of the Buddhist prayer, “May I be filled with loving kindness.” How does that feeling take shape in your life as both a giver and a receiver of love?
- Keep learning how to heal, thrive and grow – One of the greatest gifts of mother love and the family bond is learning. Consider how much you’ve had to learn since arriving here as a helpless infant. Every day of life was a new experience as you grew and added to your knowledge and skills. As an adult, you began to direct and shape more and more of your learning. The realm of the Great Mother is all about growth and change. Just as the natural world blossoms with new life in the Spring, you are designed to discover new ways to grow in spirit by opening your heart and mind. What have you learned about who you are and why you are here? What are the talents, gifts, and abilities that define you? What can you do each day to foster your gifts, just as a loving mother fosters her child?
- Take loving action in the world – One of the Great Mother’s most important lessons is the tie that binds. Modern science is revealing what ancient wisdom always knew—that everything in this world is connected to and dependent upon everything else. The natural world, the web of life, is truly a web that can carry the vibrations of movement from one side to another distant side, from top to bottom. Cutting down the rain forests in Brazil affects the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which affects the melting of the polar ice caps which affects the sea levels around the world. Could it also be that the child you teach to read in Los Angeles will affect the future of the child in Nigeria who needs a desk and a book and a school? Why not? The interconnections of the natural world are exactly this miraculous. Whatever actions you take to provide loving service in the world will send forth ripples of healing energy. Choose a way to give service that matches your gifts (that brings you joy). It can be any helping action. Then imagine the ways in which this action could connect you to a distant positive outcome.
The wisdom of the Great Mother both shelters and challenges and so meets the needs of the human spirit. A loving mother provides the sustenance and security her child needs as well as encouraging growth and independence. You can honor the wisdom of the Great Mother by honoring your gifts and using them with joy and gratitude to help heal the world. As you look up at the sky, down at the newly-green earth, and all around at the blooming energy of spring leaves and flowers, thank the Great Mother for her abiding love!
For more ways to awaken your gifts and bring them forth into the world, join Deborah for a very special 7-week journey to Awaken the Divine Feminine within you.
